


Support Act

by parmavi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Homesickness, Hunk centric, No shipping, Post Season 2, Rest of the team are fairly background this time, Shiro isn't in this one but he's mentioned, We ride the friendship boat like men, hurt/ comfort, main focus on Hunk and Lance, probably au after S3 release
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 14:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11694006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parmavi/pseuds/parmavi
Summary: Hunk has a bad day. Luckily, he doesn't have to deal with it alone.





	Support Act

**Author's Note:**

> This is both the first fanfic I've written in about 8 or 9 years and the first time I've ever used AO3, so bear with my rusty writing skills and potentially dodgy formatting! I promised myself I'd actually post something before season 3 and I just barely met my own self imposed deadline, whew. So without further ado!

Hunk liked to think he was fairly level-headed. Sure, his anxieties could get the better of him at times (which frankly he thought was understandable considering the whole ‘space war with the fuzzy purple aliens’ thing), but compared to his often incredibly impulsive, over-emotional friends he was a veritable beacon of emotional stability. If someone had to provide the voice of reason it was usually either Shiro - who always seemed to radiate a deep sense of inner focus despite his own very obviously unresolved issues - or Hunk, and he took a certain amount of pride in that. Between them, they were getting pretty adept at keeping the team in check.

But Shiro vanishing was a massive blow to that status quo and staying level-headed for everybody else was often a struggle; far too often now, it felt as though the majority of the team were inches from falling apart without Shiro around to help reign them in. Really, Hunk kind of felt like he was falling apart a little bit himself, but he knew that the hurt went a lot deeper for the others, particularly Keith and Pidge. He deeply cared about Shiro, but he didn’t have a history like Keith did, and unlike Pidge, Hunk was fairly sure Shiro had never met or worked with his family; aside from a couple of vaguely remembered news reports, he didn’t really know who he even was before they had met - they’d just kind of been flung together and hadn’t really had a chance to properly get to know each other since. It was still beyond upsetting to have him just disappear without a trace, but Hunk and Lance at least had the luxury of not taking it quite as personally as the others.

Because of that, it had largely been down to the two of them to support the others when they couldn’t support themselves, whether it be by providing a friendly ear, giving someone a much needed hug, cooking up something comforting or, most commonly really, forcing them to look after themselves. He really was doing his best to keep on being a source of stability through it all because everybody needed that consistency right now. But he was starting to feel the strain. Some days it was just really hard to be the support to everyone else when he could kind of do with a little support himself.

Hunk had been having bad days. Hunk was a firm believer in the power of a positive mental attitude, and for the most part it worked out pretty well for him at keeping negativity at bay - but he was only human. Sometimes bad days just happened no matter how much he tried to will them away. And though he felt kind of bad admitting it, when he had those bad days, most of the time it wasn’t even because of Shiro - sometimes he just felt a little homesick, a little too anxious; it was something that had been going on for a while before the whole Zarkon fiasco, a while before they had been shot off into space even.

The difference was that before Shiro, those off days weren’t too much of an issue. Hunk was pretty upfront about if he wasn't feeling so hot - as well as being a strong advocate of a positive mental attitude conquering all, he felt it was important to not bottle up feelings - and when he could feel a bad day approaching he often just spent some time talking to Lance, or building something with Pidge, or on one memorable occasion sparring with Keith and Shiro - something he swore to never repeat again outside of training - but recently, it just didn’t feel appropriate.

Hunk was supporting everyone, but so was Lance, and he always seemed so drained from dealing with Keith and Pidge nowadays that it would have been too much to bring up Hunk’s relatively trivial anxieties too. And something as mundane as a little homesickness wasn’t something that he could put on Keith or Pidge what with how gloomy they always seemed to be nowadays. As for Coran and Allura, there was just no time to speak to them about anything that wasn’t mission related, they were so busy trying to find Shiro and keep track of the Galra and maintain their growing number of alliances - they all had bigger problems. And he accepted that: being the support in situations like this was his job, not everyone else’s. He was perfectly capable of dealing with things by himself for a while, so that’s exactly what he did and it worked. It was hard, and the longer he went without sharing how he was feeling made each consecutive bad day seem worse than the last rather than better, but it was what it was. He could still support the team just fine. He could still be that beacon. He was fine.

Hunk woke that morning to alarms blaring around him and the force of wanting to go home hitting him like a physical punch to the gut. But it was okay. He could work through it.

In retrospect, Hunk really should have known better than to try to fool himself.

\--

The emergency alarms screeched over the tannoy as Hunk frantically scrambled to free himself from his bedsheets, before he ultimately tripped gracelessly to the floor with a loud yelp. How long had he even been asleep? Minutes? It sure felt like it had only been minutes - a quick glance toward the ‘castle-time-clock’ sitting near his bedside tragically confirmed this: it had been barely 3 hours since he had gone to bed the previous night.

Hunk rolled his eyes skyward and silently, but enthusiastically, cursed the fact alarms still existed in the middle of space, and that aliens were real and usually wanted to hurt them, and that he was in a tiny little dark room on a spaceship in the middle of who-knows-where instead of sleeping in on his comfortable, familiar bed in his comfortable, familiar room on earth, blissfully ignorant to and uninvolved in 10,000 year long galactic takeovers. If he was back home he could have just got up, got a hot chocolate (and man, paladin duties notwithstanding Hunk liked to think of himself as a pacifist, but he could have quite happily killed for a genuine, homemade hot chocolate from Earth right about now) and gone back to bed. But he wasn’t back home. He was here, lying on the floor, hot chocolate-less and blearily willing himself to get up and react to whatever fresh new threat was happening now. He let his head fall back against the ground with a dull thunk. Today was going to be _awful_.

When bad days did happen, they generally came in two flavours: there were the days where the sheer magnitude of what was at stake really, truly hit him and he had to fight back wave after wave of anxiety and fear, and then there were days where he registered how far, far away they were from home and he felt that horrible sense of swooping grief that made his stomach twist. It looked like homesickness had won the luck of the draw today.

He didn't actually often get homesick, at least not unmanageably so anymore, and it was never quite as dramatic as Lance’s by now infamous bouts of homesickness that they’d all been subjected to at one point or another, but when it hit, it hit hard, without warning and threw him off balance for the rest of the day. Sure, he missed home - he missed his family, the food, the _predictability_ , but since he’d resolved all that time ago at the Balmera with Shay and her people to do everything he could to help those still out there suffering at the hands of the Galra, since he’d resolved to be the best support he could be to the rest of the team, he’d generally managed to stay focused enough on the bigger picture to put all that aside. His innate need to protect and help others, and the knowledge everything they were doing was ultimately helping the home and family that he’d left behind were usually enough to power him through any negativity he felt. But there were some days when it didn’t feel like enough, when it was harder to pack it all away. Days when he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he’d never get to go back. He’d had more of those days since Zarkon. Since they found out the war was nowhere near over after all. Since they ended up losing so much more than they had won.

 _“Paladins!”_ Allura’s urgent voice over the comms startled Hunk from his thoughts. _“This is not a drill! Please come to the control room immediately! Move quickly!”_

It looked like feeling homesick and sorry for himself was going to have to wait, Hunk thought with a grimace as he finally lifted himself up from the ground. Shaking the thoughts away from the forefront of his mind, Hunk haphazardly pulled on his armour, scooped up his helmet and bayard with well-practiced ease and jogged towards his doorway. He paused briefly before opening it with a sad look back at his abandoned bed. Twisted sheets still lay pitifully on the ground where they had fallen. Hunk looked on mournfully as his pillow slowly deflated.

“I’m sorry,” he solemnly whispered, bringing his free hand up into a mock salute as he attempted to straighten his stance. “I’ll come back for you.”

His pillow only seemed to deflate more in response. He opened the door with one last wistful gaze back before finally hurrying down the hall to the control room with as much energy as his half-asleep brain would allow, vainly hoping that Allura was lying and it would turn out to just be another drill so he could go back to sleep.

\---

Allura was not lying and it was not, as it turned out, just another drill.

Hunk was the last to arrive - something that was apparently unusual enough to warrant a raised eyebrow from Lance - but somewhat thankfully Allura was already launching into getting everyone up to speed before the other boy could draw attention to it. Much to Hunk’s relief, they were not under direct attack - he wasn't sure if he could deal with that level of mortal peril so early in the day what with how fragile he was feeling - but less happily, a nearby planet was in need of urgent assistance. They had received a distress signal from the natives of a small planet called P’yroka, and would be making the short wormhole jump over there as soon as they came up with a basic plan of action.

“It’s a beautiful place,” Coran was saying nostalgically, “or at least it was 10,000 years ago; famous across the stars for its fantastic array of vegetation and natural resources - it used to be a very popular holidaying spot back in the day!”

“But I’m going to go out on a hunch and say us heading there for a vacation to boost their tourism trade isn’t the kind of urgent assistance they had in mind,” Lance lamented with a pout.

“Of course not - we hardly have the time for vacations right now,” Allura said with a small frown, looking slightly bemused at the idea. “We will be going there to aid the P’yrokatt people in their struggle against the Galra. P’yroka is a planet that is under Galra occupation and has been for a very long time.  They have been living under captivity for decafeebs - I imagine there are very little there who have known life outside of it.”

Keith frowned at that. “But if they’ve been under captivity as long as they can remember, why wait till now to make a distress call?”

“Well, us beating Zarkon caused a pretty big shift in circumstances - they probably didn’t think there was anyone out there to even send a distress signal to before, whereas now they know Voltron can help and isn’t just some old myth,” Pidge theorised somewhat distractedly as she leaned in to look more closely at the starmap Coran had opened in order to show the location of the planet in relation to the ship.

“Pidge is right,” Allura said with a short nod of acknowledgement. “Defeating Zarkon has had a twofold effect: firstly, the knowledge that Voltron has the ability to finally end this war is becoming more widespread and as such, the citizens of the universe are regaining their hope in not having to live a life of oppression and fear. Secondly, the Galra forces themselves have been thrown into chaos. In the case of P’yroka, no new soldiers have come to or from the planet since his fall; the existing soldiers stationed there have essentially been abandoned. Which brings us back to exactly what our assistance is needed for: the P’yrokatt have seized this opportunity to rise up and take back their land at last, but they need our support.”

“They're going to be pretty disappointed when we arrive and they find out we can't actually form Voltron anymore, huh?” Lance said without thinking, then winced as he shot a quick look at Keith and Pidge. Thankfully, aside from a couple of irritated looks at the unprompted interruption, neither of them seemed too badly affected by the reminder of their missing friend.

“That doesn't matter right now. Though forming Voltron again is something we need to discuss sooner rather than later, you have all shown that you are all more than capable at holding your own in battle, and that in itself will still be of great benefit to the P’yrokatt. Though they outnumber their invaders and the Galra left behind have no backup, they are a largely peaceable race that lack the experience the Galra have in war - without our help they are still considerably outmatched. From our scans, the Galra are already beginning to counterattack - though under whose orders exactly is unclear - and will not show mercy in the face of rebellion. We must act with all the means at our disposal in order to prevent innocent loss of life.”

“So more disorganised Galra and another new rebellion, gotcha. Just another Monday morning, huh?” Lance quipped with a strained smile.

The statement held far less energy than he had probably been aiming for, but it wasn’t an inaccurate sentiment. This sort of behaviour from the Galra, and the rise of rebellions within occupied planets was becoming increasingly familiar - without Zarkon’s leadership the troops seemed to be in disarray.

According to Keith's new, and quite frankly terrifying, friends at the blade of Malmora, since defeating Zarkon infighting and divisions within the empire ranks were increasing and there were several factions at play who were scrambling desperately for ultimate control; including, apparently, his _son_ , which was an unsettling thought for a multitude of reasons. There was widespread confusion about the lack of clear leadership, and loyalties were split amongst many of the soldiers. The harvesting of new planets for quintessence had all but slowed to a crawl whilst the situation was so tumultuous, and the Galra forces seemed to have pulled back a little from the occupied planets they deemed as less important or of less strategic value - like they had evidently done with P’yroka. The relative lack of resistance and interference made freeing planets still under Galra control... not quite _easy_ , what they did remained incredibly dangerous especially now they were down a paladin - but it was almost straightforward. Routine.

It was just a shame, Hunk couldn’t help but think to himself, that defeating Zarkon hadn’t just fixed everything instantly like they all hoped it would back in the beginning - He could remember all too well the grief they had felt when they had opened the black lion only to find Shiro gone. The crushing disappointment all of them had felt when they realised it wasn’t done, they couldn’t go home, look for their families, move on from this. It felt like the finish line had been yanked away from them, and advantage or not, it had been a struggle for all of them to stay motivated since.

Allura closed her eyes briefly as she considered her next words, before looking over all of them a lot more softly than before. “I understand that things have not been easy. It has been a difficult time for us all. We may have won the battle against Zarkon, but as we know, the war is not yet over, and we must remain vigilant in our duties if we are to have any hope of getting back what we have lost.”

It was naive of us… naive of _me_ to believe that the entire Galra empire could be defeated by dethroning one leader. However. It is a start. We must not underestimate how massive a blow this has been to the empire - we have succeeded in changing a 10,000 year old power dynamic and they are still scrambling to recover. Strategically, now is the best possible time to stay on the offensive, and to help as many as we can along the way - if nothing else, the more allies that we make, the more resources we have to draw from in which we can find information in the whereabouts of Shiro.”

They are starting to tear themselves apart from the inside. We should not afford the empire the time it needs to recover.”

Coran gave Allura a supportive smile. “We know, princess - We'll be here for as long as it takes. We won't let the Galra empire destroy any more lives.”

And boy, there was that homesickness again, somehow feeling even more profound than it had felt before. _As long as it takes_ , thought Hunk glumly. _But how long will that even be? Am I ever going to see Earth again?_

Suddenly, Lance was prodding him gently in the side with a bony elbow, jolting him from his thoughts.

“Hey buddy, we haven't talked in a while. You feeling okay?,” Lance questioned in an undertone. “You look kind of… off.”

Hunk tried his best to wipe whatever expression he was making off his face and smile reassuringly. The last thing he wanted to do was worry anyone right before a mission. He was fine after all. He’d been dealing with his off days for a while by himself now and had been managing okay. It felt a bit harder than usual today admittedly, but he could still pack it away so that he could be the support the others needed.

“We literally talk all the time, dude,” Hunk deflected with a handwave, resolutely ignoring the fact that whenever they talked nowadays it was usually just to plan out how to deal with the others, or to prompt Lance himself into ranting about what was bothering him. Apparently this was something that had not escaped Lance’s notice.

“No, you listen to me vent to you all the time, but _you’ve_ not complained about anything in weeks." 

Hunk sighed and let his shoulders drop. “That’s because I have nothing to complain about. I’m fine, Lance. Really. Just a bit tired, you know? I need to wake up a little more.” It wasn’t a lie: what with the lack of sleep and whirling thoughts in his mind, Hunk was exhausted already. If it wasn’t for the pre-mission adrenaline boost, he’d be sleeping on his feet right now. Lance still looked worried though, narrowing his eyes slightly as a frown started to grow on his face. But before Lance could question him more and start to draw the attention of the whole room, Keith was stepping forward and clearing his throat, mercifully drawing all focus to him. Lance gave Hunk a significant look, suggesting the conversation was suspended rather than over before turning away to face their acting leader.

Hunk wasn’t really sure why Lance was so concerned. Sure, it was kind of unusual for them to go such a long time without venting to one another, but there had just never been a good time nowadays, they both knew this. He couldn’t deny that not being able to put himself first every once in a while was starting to wear on him, and he was starting to have a lot more bad days than good, but he was still able to support everyone else. And really, everyone else’s need for support right now was still a lot greater than his own.

Hunk knew he was important too and he wasn’t about to martyr himself - they were all ‘defenders of the universe’ after all, they all had a valuable role within the group - but dealing with it by himself had been working, more or less. Besides, the distraction of the mission and spending some time with Yellow should be enough to make him feel better in no time after all. Perking up slightly at that thought, Hunk tuned back into the conversation as Keith began to discuss their strategy.

\---

Things moved very quickly after that. In fact in the end, they wouldn’t have needed to form Voltron even if they could. The mission was a complete success.

It just made it all the more frustrating to Hunk that contrary to his belief that this would make him feel better, he still felt so terrible. Really, he felt worse than ever. It was just. The song and dance of battle was all so _normal_ now that it made his chest ache.

When they arrived at the planet, Hunk's mood was lifted by that familiar normality at first. It was always comforting to fly with Yellow, his lion never failing to supply him with an endless torrent of support and encouragement. And it was reassuring to listen the casual banter between his friends over the comms as they zipped around the surface of P’yroka - and man, Coran was right when he said it had been a beautiful place.

It was clear that the planet had seen better days, what with the Galra outposts and camps leaving their scars on the landscape, but if you squinted in just the right way and ignored all the obtrusive purple buildings, it was all oddly similar to the tropics back on earth - sand, sea and grassy rainforest as far as the eye could see. Well, the sand was kind of iridescent, and the trees were more of a pinky-orange than the verdant green he was used to, but still. It was nice. All in all, supported by Yellow, surrounded by his friends, Hunk had felt better than he had since he'd woken up that morning.

It didn't last. There wasn't even a dramatic event or catalyst to blame it on really. One moment Hunk was content listening to the chatter and bustle of his friends, feeling himself slipping into the usual routine of battle as they fought alongside one another, and the next, the realisation that all of this really _was_ routine to him now and the implications of that were smacking into him with all the force of a freight train.

This - all of this - was his new normal. Flying around strange planets so far away from home. Saving worlds that he’d never even dreamed of existing before all of this began -  this was his life now. At some point he'd just began to accept this was now how things were, and the realisation shook him more than he was willing to admit.

When had this become the normal routine instead of his life back home? When had normal shifted from lazy Sundays baking with his mother, laughter and the smell of fragrant spices filling the air, to aliens and robots and firefights? Was he starting to forget, replace those memories? He couldn't… He couldn’t remember what her laugh sounded like. How could he forget what his own mother's laugh sounded like?

Yellow had made a valiant attempt at trying to reassure him that everything was okay, he could recognise that now with the power of hindsight and a clearer head; the concern and support had cocooned him almost aggressively, but he just couldn't register it the time - everything was too much. All the thoughts he’d been struggling to hold at bay were crashing around him. The day’s poor start, the steadily worsening homesickness, the anxiety and guilt over forgetting parts of his life that were so routine to him before… it was overwhelming and too much and he no longer had the mental energy to ignore it - he barely had the mental energy to remember how to even _breathe_. The steady, insistent presence of Yellow in the back of his head was really the only thing stopping him from bursting into hysterical tears there and then in the cockpit.

Hunk hadn’t realised that he’d frozen up at the controls, he couldn’t hear the voices of everyone shouting at him to respond until a lucky laser from a small Galra jet hit Yellow in the side, forcibly and painfully jolting him out his mind and back to the here and now. He thought someone might have asked if he was okay at that point, and he’d responded by saying _something_ , but his voice was strange and oddly disconnected even to his own ears.

He managed to remain present enough to fight the rest of the battle after that, but it was as though he was on autopilot, no longer joining in with or even really registering what was being said over the comms - it was really all he could do to focus on breathing steadily, respond mechanically when he needed to and to keep his hands from shaking on the controls. Maybe he was _literally_ on autopilot - at the very least, Hunk was pretty sure Yellow was helping more than he usually would because his flying was far sloppier than usual, but he miraculously managed to stay steady in the air and avoid any major incidents.

By the time they had all landed their lions on the planet's surface after the mission was completed Hunk had managed to calm down somewhat - the frantic, rampaging thoughts had mostly settled down into a heavy sense of cloying, tired misery in the pit of his stomach, but he wasn’t sure if it was better. Everything felt so disjointed and oddly muted. He wanted, _needed_ to get away for a little while, but at the same time, he just couldn’t bring himself to leave. Yellow was worried, but Hunk didn’t have the energy to reassure him that he was okay anymore. He couldn’t even convince himself that he was fine now. He’d been wrong. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t support himself or anyone else. He was just. So tired.

Which brought him back to the here and now. Hunk wasn’t sure how long he had been sat alone in Yellow’s cockpit. Too long probably - he needed to leave, join in with the cleanup and diplomatic talks, but aside from a short burst of restless pacing that ultimately only ended in him moving from his chair to sit down on the floor in one of the corners of the room instead, he couldn’t motivate himself to move. There was a part of him that had thought that taking some time to himself might help. He could take a few moments to regroup his thoughts, then he could bounce back, join the others and carry on. But it really wasn't working. He didn’t feel that awful sense of overwhelming anxiety that he’d felt earlier anymore, but he wasn’t sure that this mental exhaustion and steadily worsening despair was any better.

Now that he’d given up on stopping the thoughts from coming, his mind was like an echo chamber of unhappiness that he just couldn’t get away from, and the solitude was just making it worse. But it was probably too late to talk about it now - Lance tried to get him to talk earlier and he’d just dismissed him believing he was doing better than he actually was. Would Lance be annoyed that he’d rejected his help earlier? Would the team be angry that he’d let it get this far, and that now he couldn’t help support them with their significantly bigger problems? He wasn’t sure if he had the ability to handle his teammate’s annoyance on top of everything else.

With another sigh, Hunk slumped down further down against the wall, letting his head fall against the metal plating with a dull thud. Raking an unsteady hand (maybe that anxiety was still there just below the fogginess after all) through his hair, Hunk couldn’t help but think that he really should have listened to his gut feeling that morning and just stayed in bed.

“Hunk?”

With an undignified yelp, Hunk scrambled back upright , his head whipping around to find the source of the noise. He didn’t have to look far to find it - Lance was stood hesitantly to the side of Hunk's chair, a relieved, if slightly forced, smile clearly visible on his face when he spotted Hunk sitting in the corner. Hunk blinked in confusion - he hadn't even noticed him enter.

“...Lance? How did you…?”

Lance glanced around Yellow’s interior briefly before refocusing on Hunk with a frown. He slowly approached him, as if he was scared he would bolt if he moved too quickly. “I convinced Yellow to let me in. You've been up here for a long time, none of us could get you to respond on the comms. We were all worried about you.”

Hunk shot his long abandoned helmet on the floor a guilty look. He couldn’t meet Lance in the eye - worrying the others and giving them even more to stress about had been exactly what he had been trying to avoid in the first place. “Oh. I'm sorry.”

Hunk heard Lance huff out a breath. “You don't have to apologise, just… Hey, look at me.” Lance moved to crouch directly in front of Hunk and rested a firm hand on his shoulder. Hunk looked up bracing himself for annoyance - it was almost worse when all he could see on Lance’s face was worry. He found himself quickly looking back to the ground again. “ Seriously man, what’s going on? This isn’t like you. Like, at all. You stopped responding during the battle, then you didn’t leave Yellow; we thought you might have been hurt when that laser hit you.” Lance’s eyes flickered across his body worriedly. _“Are_ you hurt?”

“No! I’m fine, I… I just...”

Hunk and Lance had spent way too much time living in each others pockets and shared way too much over the years for him to make an attempt at dishonesty even if he wanted to, and they both knew it. As it was, dishonesty was the last thing on his mind now - he was just overwhelming grateful that Lance was there, and as he met Lance’s eyes again, the concern in them almost overwhelming, he could feel any lingering resolve to figure this out by himself crumble around him. It was too much. He was done supporting everyone else for a while. He could let himself not be okay.

“I… I’m just not having a very good day,” Hunk admitted in a small voice, feeling his face crumple before the words had even finished leaving his mouth. Lance reacted with almost immediate sympathy, his own eyes welling up at the sight of him.

Lance was leaning forward and enveloping Hunk in a hug faster than he could even blink, his arms wrapping tightly around Hunk as though he could physically hold him together. It was kind of awkward, what with Hunk still sitting slumped on the floor in the corner, and Lance bending over at an uncomfortable angle to reach him, but after a little shimmying around to reposition himself, he made it work. It was familiar again, a routine they were both used to, but this familiarity didn't hurt. It felt like home. At some point during this, Lance had moved again so that he was sitting next to him, but he still held on. Hunk let his head loll onto Lance's shoulder and they both just sat there on the floor as Hunk let himself let go, tears running silently down his face for everything and everyone he had left behind whilst Lance, a solid, steady support, murmured quiet words of encouragement beside him.

Lance let Hunk sit and calm down for a little while, waiting for him to brush the last few tears from his eyes before squeezing him gently and breaking the spell. Hunk noticed with an almost embarrassing amount of gratitude that he had left his arm around him, Lance probably realising how grounding Hunk found the physical contact.

“Feeling any better, big guy?”

Hunk considered it for a few seconds before realising that he did. He still felt pretty awful, honestly, but all the crying had gone a long way in purging the awful numbness from his system, and taken the mess of emotions down a few notches from ‘unbearable’ to something he could actually see the other side of.

“Yeah,” Hunk said, happy to note his voice was a lot stronger than it had been before. “I mean. I’m not great, obviously, think we just established _that_ , but-” Hunk cut himself off with an embarrassed shrug. Lance leaned further into Hunk’s side with a guilty frown.

“I could have stopped it going this far. I thought maybe you were speaking to Coran or something but I know you, I should have spoken to you properly before-”

“It’s not your fault, Lance,” Hunk cut in hastily. “I didn’t _want_ to talk to anyone before - it’s just all been such a mess lately with Shiro and Zarkon and trying to keep Keith and Pidge out of trouble, and you’ve been so stressed helping keep the team together - I didn’t want to make it worse by adding my problems on top if it all. I thought as long as I could still help everyone else, it would be okay. I just wanted to put everyone else first - my issues just didn’t seem as important in comparison to everything else.”

Lance didn’t look happy in the slightest at this. “You can’t always put everyone else before yourself. It’s like… do you remember back at the Garrison when we learned first aid?”

Hunk nodded slowly. “Yeah? Pidge nearly knocked you out with a training dummy after you wouldn’t stop making CPR innuendoes dude, you both made it pretty difficult to forget.”

“Okay, but before that, the very first thing the instructor told us.”

With a spark of recollection, Hunk finally got what Lance was driving at. “It doesn’t matter how badly someone else is hurt, you can’t put yourself at risk.”

“Right, because if you go down too, then you can’t help anyone. We always talked about things before. You don’t have to stop doing that just because things are more stressful now. Besides: You still let me complain to you about Keith and whatever else, it’s only fair that you let me do the same for you.”

Hunk couldn’t help but chuckle at that. “I guess you’re right.”

“You _know_ I’m right. Did you want to talk about it now? It might help.”

“We’re still kind of in the middle of a mission, is now really the best time?”

“There’s never going to be a best time. Besides, the mission’s basically over, everyone else can take care of the diplomacy bit for a while. Allura’s down there to stop Pidge and Keith from being too Pidge and Keith-like, they should be fine.”

Hunk let his head fall forwards with a sigh, trying to formulate his thoughts into some sort of coherent response. “It’s just kind of strange, you know? That all this is our lives now. I miss Earth so much, but there’s some days when I don’t think about home at all, and I keep forgetting about the little things I took for granted all the time. You know, I forgot what my mom’s laugh sounded like earlier?” Hunk chuckled sadly, as he gazed out at nothing in particular. “I guess I never thought I should try and remember it more clearly at time time, it didn’t seem important. There were a lot of things that didn’t seem important. I just feel so scared that we’re going to be here for so long that one day I’m going to wake up and not remember anything, that I’ll just stop caring. I’m glad we’re saving the universe and all, but I guess I never realised how _big_ the universe really was until we were out in it. It was easier when we all thought it would be over after Zarkon, but we beat him and we’re still here. It kind of feels like we didn’t really win at all.”

Lance tightened his grip around Hunk and let out a sad sigh. “It’s hard. None of this is easy, not for any of us. I miss home too. Whenever we’re onboard the castle, I just. I miss the sun and the rain and everything inbetween - I didn’t think I’d ever miss how unpredictable weather can be on Earth, but I do. We come to places like this and it’s _amazing -_ seriously, we need to explore, maybe go to the beach when we’re done here - but it’s never the same. And it scares me to even think about how much it’s probably all changed in the time we’ve been gone. My family… who knows what the Garrison told them when we left? They might have already started to move on. I forget things about them sometimes, so it makes sense that they would too, especially if they think that I’m...” Lance couldn’t finish that train of thought, instead swallowing thickly before continuing. “But it’s going to be okay. I don’t think we’ll ever forget the important things about Earth, no matter how far away it is or how long we’ve been away. I know every time I think that I’ve forgotten something, I remember loads more little things that I didn’t even know were stored up there, or I wake up the next day and the memory’s back like it’d never left. It’s probably the same for you.”

Hunk let himself think back to those sunday kitchen memories again, this time without the haze of panic clouding his perception. It was still silent, he still couldn’t quite grasp her voice. But he could remember the sight of the worn net curtains fluttering in the slight breeze from the open windows, a fine mist of flour floating in the air around them. He could remember the smell of spices, rich and fragrant, cutting through the gentle lavender scent of the perfume his mother wore every day. He could remember the warmth and love. He could still remember. For the first time that day, Hunk felt the heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach ease slightly.

“Do you really think we’re ever going to get Shiro back and get back home?” Hunk asked the question on the tip of his tongue before he could stop himself, though he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted an honest answer.

“We will.”

Hunk was slightly taken aback by the sheer determination in the words. There was a fire in Lance's eyes as he continued.  “We have to. We’re going to find Shiro, it’s only a matter of time. And after that, even if it takes years, we’re going to get back home. No war can last forever, right? We’ve all come so far already, and it’s like Allura said: we’ve already hit the Galra where it hurts. We just need to keep going and we’ll be done before we know it. If anyone can manage it, it’s us. We're a good team.”

There wasn’t a trace of doubt in his voice - the unwavering faith Lance had in the team, in their ability to get through this was staggering, and it was enough to finally let Hunk break through to the other side of the negative haze that had been tinting his day. “Yeah. You might be right right - we’ve got this. Thanks, Lance. You’re a good friend.”

Lance scoffed. “Of course I’m right. Don’t tell Pidge, but I’m like, the smartest member of team Voltron, always.” His smirk faded into something more genuine. “But seriously, anytime, my man.”

“For what it’s worth,” Hunk added, with a reassuring smile of his own, “I don’t think either of our families are going to believe whatever it is the Garrison’s ended up feeding them for a second. They aren’t going to just move on or forget any of us that easily. Honestly, knowing your family, your mom’s probably been camping outside the place to interrogate them all on the daily.”

Lance groaned, but he couldn’t hide the grateful grin on his face that showed it was exactly what he needed to hear. “When she’s on a mission, she’s on a mission. It almost makes you feel bad for Iverson.”

“Almost,” Hunk agreed with a smile.

Lance finally extracted himself from Hunk’s side, bouncing to his feet and stretching out his muscles with an almost cat-like fluid grace. He offered a hand to Hunk to help pull him up.

“We should go join the others and let them know you’re okay. You feel up to leaving?”

Hunk nodded as he let himself be pulled to stand, feeling the most stable he had since he’d woken up that morning. “I feel so bad about worrying everyone. They’re all going to be so mad.”

“We’re all basically a weird mix-and-match family out here, I don’t think you feeling bad is going to stop us worrying about each other, man,” Lance said with a sympathetic pat on the arm. “But really, far as worrying the team goes, this is pretty tame. Just wait till we get Shiro back and he hears about all the ‘improvising’ Keith pulls mid battle nowadays...”

Hunk couldn't help but smile as they both made their way out of Yellow side by side - he felt lighter than he had done in a while. He still missed Earth, and there would still be bad days; he didn't think those would stop until they finally returned. But right here and now, with Lance at his side, and his entire dysfunctional space family behind him, home didn’t feel quite so far away.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this because I see a lot of fanfics that deal with Lance's homesickness, but there's rarely anything for the other paladins, or even Allura and Coran who (with maybe the exception of Keith) must all feel pretty homesick too. I wanted to show Hunk some love, so this ended up coming to life. Hope you all enjoyed my first forray into voltron fanfic! I have lots more fanfic ideas I want to write, (I'm very excited for a couple of them in particular) so watch this space for more in the future! Thank you for reading!


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